A decade after Hamas seized the Gaza Strip, the living conditions
for two million people in the Palestinian enclave are
deteriorating “further and faster” than the prediction made in
2012 that the enclave would become “unlivable” by 2020, a new
United Nations report has found.
“Gaza has continued on its trajectory of 'de-development', in
many cases even faster than we had originally projected,” said
Robert Piper, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and
Development Activities, in a press release on the new report,
“Gaza – 10 years later.”
In an intra-Palestinian conflict, Hamas took over Gaza in 2007.
Israel has sought to isolate the group by restricting the
movements of goods and people in and out of the strip. It was
also administratively separated from the West Bank.
The report, compiled by the UN country team in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory, took stock of some key indicators
identified in an earlier 2012 UN report that predicted Gaza would
become “unlivable” by 2020 unless underlying trends were
reversed.
Thnew report found that real gross domestic product (GDP) per
capita had decreased and the provision of health services
continued to decline in Gaza, where average Palestinians are
trapped in a “sad reality” and their daily lives are “getting
more and more wretched” .
The report called on Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and
the international community to take action towards more
sustainable development investments, reinvigoration of Gaza's
productive sectors, improvement of freedom of movement for both
people and goods, as well as respect for human rights and
international humanitarian law.
“The alternative will be a Gaza that is more isolated and more
desperate,” warned Mr. Piper. “The threat of a renewed, more
devastating escalation will increase, and the prospects for
intra-Palestinian reconciliation will dwindle – and with them,
the prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine.”
Thanks in large part to the scale of services provided by the UN
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA), Gaza has maintained high education standards, but
average daily classroom time for students remains as low as four
hours.
While an earlier projection that the coastal aquifer would become
unusable by 2016 has been revised to the end of 2017, Gaza's only
water source is predicted to be irreversibly-depleted by 2020,
unless immediate remedial action is taken.
Access to materials, which are necessary to allow the Gazan
economy, infrastructure and basic services to recover from the
2014 conflict, remains highly restricted.
Electricity supply – this year “the most visible deterioration in
the living conditions in Gaza” – is as low as at 90 megawatts in
recent days against the 450 megawatts needed. “Ongoing
humanitarian assistance, especially through UNRWA's services, are
helping slow this descent, but the downward direction remains
clear,” said Mr. Piper.
Yesterday, the UN and non-governmental organizations conducted a
field visit to Gaza with nine members of the diplomatic community
from Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Turkey, and
the United Kingdom, to witness first-hand the cumulative impact
of 10 years of closures and internal divide.
